Don't want to be all Apple-fanboy, but...
Posted by Trey Reeme on October 17th, 2007
Gene rocks the Macs at Mt. Lehman. In today’s CUES Tech Port, Lisa writes:
While plenty of individuals go for Macs, we were interested to learn … that $40 million (U.S.) Mount Lehman Credit Union, Mount Lehman, British Columbia, is an all-Mac credit union.
“We have a few PCs out of necessity, not want,” wrote Gene Blishen, manager of the CU and chief blogger for Tinfoiling. “Every IT person working for us started as a PC guy and has ended up a Mac/Unix type.”
Blishen says when he joined the CU in 1992 that it was in need of some new computers. He already liked Macs and the Appletalk network allowed the credit union to do file sharing quite easily, without a server. Blishen says he worried a bit about staying on Macs until Apple incorporated Unix into its operating system, which made it really solid and usable. Now, with Vista and all of its reported problems on the horizon, Blishen is especially glad the CU uses Macs.
“We have a check printing program here and we bought a Vista machine to support it,” Blishen reports. But the staff had so many problems with Vista that “after a day and a half, we gave up and installed an earlier operating system on the machine.”
Gene isn’t stopping there. On his Twitter page last week, he announced:
Just ready to sign off on Mobile Banking Project with CUCBC. SMS only and iPhone prototype. How do you spell ‘excited’?
BTW, tomorrow is International Credit Union Day. Gene is spreading the word and would love to see other CUs doing the same.
Update 10/18: Mt. Lehman CU has started blogging at www.mlcublog.com.
OS X: It’s a comfortable, cheery way to compute.
Vista’s just heavy paint on an aging car.
ugh, Mac. I must say I was pretty impressed with your presentation and Tim’s at the Symposium! Keynote is pretty cool, but it is still MS for me…
Everything about Mount Lehman Credit Union is a thing of beauty. Gene, the 10-person staff and the board have created a culture and credit union that makes small completely relevant and successful.
I am proud to be an Apple and a Mt Lehman Credit Union Fan Boy. A few of the Currency Marketing staff are attending Mt. Lehman’s Credit Union Day celebration tomorrow.
If you’re nice, he’ll even open the server room to show you the Apple Xserves!
By the way, I travelled with Gene to Indianapolis and I have never been so out-geeked in my life. He has more gizmos and super-secret apps on his MacBook Pro than you can shake a stick at!
Gene Blishen is my hero. If I could elect anyone President of All Credit Unions, it would be Gene!
@William – President of all credit unions, eh? What a gig that would be! Gene would be a good one! :)
Macs are like credit unions. People who are introduced to them use them for life – and can’t be swayed to change. I’ve always thought that credit unions were like a secret that not everyone knows about, but once they find out – they can’t imagine banking anywhere else.
Agree, Gene for President!
About time he got some recognition for his ‘all mac’ CU. Apple should really case study him and fling him a couple XServes.
I had the priviledge of being amongst the Lehmanites on International CU day. It was raining buckets on that day, yet about 10% of the members of this one-branch CU showed up for the celebrations – what does that tell you? Mt. Lehman CU is a testament that a CU does not have to “go big” to succeed!
Gene really leverages appropriate technology to benefit his members – and how more appropriate can you get leveraging the power of the Macintosh?
I cast my ballot with Waz & benry.
Michael, that was pure poetry. :)
“Macs are like credit unions. People who are introduced to them use them for life – and can’t be swayed to change. I’ve always thought that credit unions were like a secret that not everyone knows about, but once they find out – they can’t imagine banking anywhere else.”